Yet unannounced BlackBerry Milan may have been canceled

Rumor has it that RIM has scratched off one town of its travelogue of code names - Milan. It is (was?) a portrait slider with a 4.2" screen, running RIM's upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS (shortly known as BBX). A leaked mockup of the phone looks very similar to the BlackBerry London, save for the slide-out QWERTY of course.

The alleged reason for the demise of the Milan is hardware problems, but what kind of hardware problem was left unspecified.

A portrait slider with a 4+ inch screen is a rare beast - there have been some specimens (like the Dell Venue Pro), but there isn't a huge market out there for them. Of course, the info on the screen size can be wrong, but the hardware problems in question may be clumsy handling of the long device (especially with the keyboard extended).

There's still time for RIM to resurrect the BlackBerry Milan - the phones running the new OS are scheduled for Q3 this year. RIM is reportedly waiting for LTE-enabled chipsets with dual-core processors from Qualcomm for these phones, which might be the issue.

We're talking about an unconfirmed cancellation of an unconfirmed device here, so take everything with a pinch of salt. Plus, not all prototypes make it to market.

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